Chronicles
How B. Alan Wallace pushed the boundaries of Western science by investigating ancient contemplative technology.
Today, “contemplative science” is often described as simply the scientific study of meditation, relying heavily on the tools of neuroscience and psychology to measure how meditative practices affect the brain and behavior. Missing from this conception is an acknowledgement that meditative practices themselves might be employed as tools to reveal useful scientific knowledge about the world.
As a parallel, imagine if astronomy merely comprised the study of telescopes — never relying on these powerful instruments to make verifiable observations about celestial objects.
To understand how the field known as “contemplative science” can reach its full potential, we would do well to consult the man who coined the term himself: CCR co-founder Dr. B. Alan Wallace.
In 1984, Dr. Wallace enrolled at Amherst College to finish his undergraduate degree after a 14-year hiatus from Western education, during which he was ordained as a Buddhist monk. When His Holiness the Dalai Lama (who was Wallace’s preceptor) came to visit Amherst in the autumn of that same year, he encouraged Wallace to continue his studies in both physics and Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy. Wallace took His Holiness’s advice to heart, and in the winter of 1986, he submitted a 500-page honors thesis to his faculty readers, Prof. Arthur Zajonc and Prof. Robert Thurman. It was in this thesis, titled Words of Emptiness: A Centrist View of Science and Reality that the words “contemplative science” were set in print for the first time.
You can read our expanded definition of contemplative science here, but when Wallace wrote about it in his thesis, he defined it as “the phenomenological study of physical and cognitive events” (p. 285). Still, Wallace hardly believed he was inventing a new branch of science on his own. As he wrote later, “At present we lack such a science in the West, but it would be rash to conclude that it has been developed nowhere else” (p.301).
Wallace points us to the East — ancient India, to be precise — as the birthplace of contemplative science. It was there that sadhus perfected the art of meditative quiescence (also known as shamatha in the Buddhist tradition). Though extremely impressive, the profound stabilization and clarification of mental awareness that occurs with shamatha meditation is not the pinnacle of contemplative science. From the Buddhist perspective, the purpose of stabilizing one’s mind to such a degree is to make reliable and replicable observations about the nature of reality itself. As Wallace writes (p. 302, emphasis added):
The empirical methods of “contemplative research” presented as part of the Centrist [Madhyamika] View in Buddhism lead one to a direct realization of the nature of phenomena as dependently related events. This approach does not entail quantitative analysis or theory couched in mathematical terms; but it does, nevertheless, address many of the fundamental ontological issues that are being investigated in the context of the foundations of modern physics.”
In the decades since Wallace submitted his 1986 thesis, the term “contemplative science” has increasingly entered the mainstream; entire university centers and institutes now include the phrase in their titles. But to realize the full benefit that can come from collaboration between contemplatives and modern scientists, the CCR is implementing the approach proposed in the document that gave us the term itself. This approach is defined by two main attributes: (1) contemplatives are regarded as colleagues, not simply study subjects, with respect to their scientific collaborators, and (2) both ancient and modern methods are used to intersubjectively investigate the mind and its relationship to the world.
To learn more about our approach to contemplative science, visit our Research Overview page, or read our essays, “The Nature of Contemplative and Scientific Discoveries” and “A New Paradigm for Science and Religion in the Twenty-First Century.”
Enhancing the experience of our contemplatives-in-training.
On September 23, 2023, nine hearty and generous volunteers spent the day at the Miyo Samten Ling hermitage building a meditation walking trail on the south end of our 110-acre property. This trail will give our full-time contemplatives and guests more access to walking space on our land, and while this might seem like a relatively small upgrade, those in retreat can attest to its powerful impact. With this trail, our full-time contemplatives can now get fresh air and experience nature without meeting cars or neighbors on public roads, providing even more protection for the precious silence of retreat. In the future, we plan to install seating under some very special trees on the property to create spaces for comfortable outdoor meditation.
We are so grateful to our volunteers, who, in a matter of hours, helped us complete the work that would have taken us days on our own. The CCR has many other projects in process, ranging from landscaping work to fundraising. If you feel moved to volunteer your time with the CCR, please send us an email at info@centerforcontemplativeresearch.org. We would love to hear from you!
A foundational concept for our work at the CCR.
In ancient India, a ghatika was a standardized length of time (similar to our modern minutes and hours), and was often measured using a “ghatika yantra,” or a water clock. A single ghatika is 24 minutes in length, or one-sixtieth of a 24-hour day. CCR co-founder Dr. B. Alan Wallace has long emphasized one ghatika as an ideal length of time for a meditation session, a recommendation which has historical precedent:
“A session of twenty-four minutes is a good starting interval; for most people, it is neither too short nor too long … and this is the session duration that the eighth-century Indian Buddhist contemplative Kamalashila recommended for beginning meditators.”
– B. Alan Wallace, Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness
In this video, Dr. Wallace explains the ghatika in-depth and offers suggestions on choosing the duration of a meditation session.
Join us for our Ghatika Monthly Meditation Sessions: The CCR hosts a “Ghatika Monthly” session on the second Saturday of every month. These sessions include a talk, 24-minute guided meditation, and Q&A portion. Join online or in-person for this opportunity to connect with the CCR’s certified teachers, as well as the global CCR community.
Sign up here to receive Ghatika Monthly announcements and session recordings.
A world-renowned musician shares his art and the Dharma.
In September of 2023, the CCR invited the Crestone community into Miyo Samten Ling Hermitage for a concert and Dharma talk from renowned Tibetan flute player and Grammy nominee Nawang Khechog. Despite hosting over 100 members of the Crestone community, the “Sounds of Peace” concert lived up to its name. As Nawang played his impressive variety of traditional instruments – some of which he had made himself – one could hear a pin drop in Manjushri Chapel.
Watch “Sounds of Peace” on YouTube.
“Sounds of Peace” was the first public event held at Miyo Samten Ling Hermitage (formerly known as Nada Hermitage) since the CCR moved in three years ago. Father Eric Haarer, a member of the Carmelite community that resided at Nada for nearly 40 years, offered a poignant introduction for the event. As the Carmelites themselves aged and their numbers dwindled, they came to the hard decision to sell their property.
“We just kept hoping and praying that the right group would come to us,” Fr. Eric said. Though having met with many prospective buyers, when Drs. B. Alan Wallace and Eva Natanya had an impromptu stay at the hermitage, something clicked.
“We fell in love with Lama Alan, and he fell in love with this property. And we felt immediately that this is the group. We had a deep intuition.” Three years on, Fr. Eric said that their prayers for a group that respected solitude, silence, and the sacredness of the land had been “answered in spades” in the CCR.
Nawang also offered touching words to the Crestone community, pausing his musical performance to give a Dharma talk on the “Eight Verses for Training the Mind,” a short but indispensable mind training text in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Nawang recounted receiving oral instructions on this text from Khunu Lama Rinpoche – a modern day bodhisattva whose very laughter cut through to Nawang’s heart. Punctuated by lighthearted laughter of his own, Nawang shared stories from his life and the great masters of Tibet as he described the importance of cultivating bodhicitta.
Nawang also shared the joy he felt when he realized Dr. Wallace had written multiple books on mind training, saying: “If you want to be a bodhisattva, it’s all there. You have all the teachings in this beautiful Dharma center. You have one of the best teachers here, Alan Wallace.”
The CCR was delighted to offer this event as a gift to the Crestone community, which we feel extremely fortunate to be a part of. As we continue our work, we hope to offer even more to our neighbors and the world at large in the form of monthly meditation sessions led by our resident teachers, special lectures, and publications from our research in contemplative science.
Courtney Johnson describes her journey toward a contemplative path and how it informs her work as Executive Director for the CCR
“…from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Dear friends and supporters,
As we head into summer, we are eager to begin to share with you a variety of communications about happenings, histories, and the future of the CCR. We welcome those who have long been acquainted with our mission as well as those who are newer to our community into learning more about the rich mixture of people, events, and contexts that have defined the CCR’s trajectory.
Perhaps you are curious about the members of the team actively running the CCR today–those who contribute in heart and in mind to the potentially revolutionary project that it seeks to be, in keeping with the deep aspirations of its lineages and founders.
Arriving at a Contemplative Path
Today, as the CCR’s Executive Director, I thought I’d share a little about myself, as one who is deeply honored to have been entrusted with the responsibility of managing the day-to-day operations and planning for the CCR, under the guidance of our co-founders and Board. I hope this helps introduce you to why I am moved enough by our mission to have dedicated myself fully to its success, and serves as an invitation to you to connect as I would love to know you better as well.
Since Eva Natanya, CCR co-founder and my predecessor in the Executive Director role, first introduced me to you officially in the fall of 2022, my life has been fully intertwined with the mission of CCR—to ignite a revolution in the mind sciences and foster a renaissance in the world’s contemplative traditions. However, my connection with this aspiration is a longer story, and my path to this role has been both winding and serendipitous.
Having grown up in a very secular household in an American suburb, I was not exposed to contemplative practices in my youth, though I always felt inclined toward them and devoured books about hermitic, poetic, and meditative experience. I faced challenges, psychological and otherwise, that certainly would have been easier navigated with the support of meditation and other methods of contemplative inquiry. And somehow, I perceived and felt deeply that something was missing in our society, and that community and spiritual guidance had fallen away in favor of fearful conformity and cultural sterility. I knew deep down that I needed to seek wisdom beyond the standard Western narratives. I am grateful to the writers of novels, especially, for chronicling contemplative experience with incredible profundity in a way I found accessible as a point of entry.
In college, this manifested as an exploration—through Anthropology—of what enables different societies to function and flourish. After college my path felt unclear, and I found myself in Tibet, tagging along on a trip with friends who were studying Tibetan Buddhism and society. There I was exposed to a culture that, despite extraordinary hardship, seemed to find a way to embody resilience and good cheer—in both the monastic and lay communities—in a manner that I had never witnessed before in my own culture. Inspired to try a 10-day meditation retreat after my trip, I was truly shocked to discover how transformative even a “short” retreat could be. It flung the door wide open for me into a curiosity about the expansive possibilities of mind training.
Seeking further connection with such disciplines, I attended a conference about science and religion at my alma mater Columbia University, where CCR founder Dr. B. Alan Wallace gave a rousing keynote speech that captivated my attention and kindled an enduring interest in the potential to bring contemplative experiences into our contemporary culture, including through collaboration with scientific disciplines. I knew then that the equanimity and kindness I had witnessed within Tibetan culture, which was thoroughly steeped in contemplative tradition, could be taught, practiced, and evaluated in our global communities as well, and over the years I delved more deeply into various contemplative traditions.
While my professional path wended away from academic study and into the realm of applied business, that choice was informed by the deep intuition that the skills I hoped to glean could be directed toward spiritual and contemplative impact someday. After graduating from an MBA program and spending fifteen years in the innovative worlds of data, technology, and startups, I witnessed firsthand how rapidly humanity can churn itself into states that foster incredible innovation, but that struggle to reflect or follow through on values and vision, and ignore the deepest questions of survival and betterment. I felt myself withering, immersed in an unhealthy lifestyle bereft of ultimate direction.
For me, the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted my return to dedicated study and practice of contemplative methods, as taught by the CCR’s founders, that could equip me with resilience and even inspiration in a time of duress. Locked down in my shoebox apartment in New York City, I found that my mind could both heal and blossom, and seemingly intractable habits could change. I suddenly found the courage to make previously daunting major life shifts, and took the decision to break from corporate life, spending many months in both individual and group meditation retreats, relocating to Crestone, and meeting more members of the CCR community.
The capacity for personal transformation that contemplative practices facilitated in me unlocked a deep commitment to sharing the practices with others—and to trying to figure out more about how and why they can work, through the sophisticated methodologies and communication channels of our contemporary human world.
Humbled daily by the fact that I can direct my energy to rise to the challenge of growing the CCR, I am guided by our remarkable community and teachers, whose generous legacies I seek to honor. I feel that I found my way, against the odds we face in our world today, back to the methods that help me to access my own true compass. Now, I am committed to fostering the conducive conditions for advanced and novice practitioners alike to discover for themselves the insights that can chart a better course for us individually and collectively, through the CCR’s work. With gratitude and determination, I and CCR contributors embrace this opportunity, committed to spreading the seeds of genuine well-being sown by CCR.
Welcoming Growth
My focus has turned to building the necessary professional apparatus for full operational stability and sustainability. This includes the need to expand the staff to enable us to craft the programming that will move the world for the better in our time.
In coming weeks, you will see a cadence of communications regarding staff, as well as our programs, initiatives, content, and beyond—including but not limited to sharing a new website and strategic framing for our work. I eagerly anticipate unveiling our enhanced language and website, and sharing more about how our small team can find the best opportunities for impact and growth, even as we evolve through the growing pains faced by fledgling organizations.
I welcome correspondence with any and all of you, and would love to schedule time to chat, if you feel moved to reach out: courtney.johnson@centerforcontemplativeresearch.org. I am eager to deepen our collective bond with this extraordinary organization and its transformative mission.
A rare and incredibly conducive environment for deep contemplative practice.
With deep gratitude to the CCR community, we are delighted to announce the completion of our most significant building project to date: the Spiritual Director’s Cottage. This dwelling now hosts CCR founder B. Alan Wallace, where he will continue an extended meditation retreat as well as guide our cohort of full-time retreatants in their own contemplative research.
CCR contemplatives and staff joyfully welcomed Dr. Wallace to his new abode on his birthday, April 17, 2024.
While Dr. Wallace will continue his duties as Spiritual Director for the foreseeable future, we look forward to welcoming other teachers to the cabin when Dr. Wallace comes out of retreat. As Dr. Wallace said himself: “I’d like to have this cabin be put into full use—so when I’m not here, it’s filled very quickly. Belonging to none of us, and benefiting all.”
Under the guidance of resident teacher Doug Veenhof, our skilled construction team built the Spiritual Director’s Cottage with elegant simplicity, longevity, and environmental sustainability in mind.
In the planning process, Doug recognized that Southern Colorado is an ideal environment for buildings to harness the power of passive solar energy. Through insulation and strategic placement, the Spiritual Director’s Cottage can retain warmth in the winter months largely on its own, decreasing reliance on traditional energy sources for heat. The 12-inch insulated concrete walls were also designed to absorb a significant amount of heat in the warmer months, keeping the cottage cool late into long summer days. But perhaps most impressive is the rooftop solar array, which is predicted to send 20% of the energy it generates back to the grid.
The endeavor to bring this lengthy project to completion was made possible through the generous support of the wider CCR community, for which we are extremely grateful. It is invigorating to know that so many others share in the vision of what a comprehensive laboratory infrastructure for contemplative science entails, and we promise to continue to build our organization step by step to influence our world for the better.
A glimpse into the life of a full-time contemplative at the CCR.
Below, Jodie Lea shares her experiences over the course of two years as a full-time contemplative at the CCR.
Around a year ago, I completed a two-year intensive meditation retreat at the CCR in Crestone, Colorado under the guidance of Dr. B. Alan Wallace. As a student of Dr. Wallace for nearly fifteen years, I had been preparing to enter long-term retreat since I first heard Dr. Wallace speak about his vision to build Contemplative Research Observatories around the world. I felt inspired to participate in this groundbreaking vision, and fortunately I was able to join the first cohort of contemplatives to enter full-time retreat in December, 2020.
I arrived in long-term retreat after raising a family and developing a career as a counseling psychologist, yoga instructor, and student of Tibetan Buddhism. Beginning when I was a teen, I developed an interest in meditation, and throughout my career sought to understand the causes and solutions for the mental health crisis facing humanity during my lifetime. Following Dr. Wallace’s guidance, I had long been asking myself the questions: “What is the source of genuine well-being? And how can I be of greatest service in the world to help bring about greater human flourishing?” After many years helping others in the nonprofit, clinical, and educational fields, I decided I could also be of service by examining the depths of my own mind and the sources of my own suffering, and by healing my mind and cultivating greater compassion and lovingkindness.
During the two years I spent in solitary retreat at the CCR, I meditated for 7–10 hours per day, while also journaling and engaging in interviews with my teachers. I balanced my days by walking, light chores, cooking, yoga, and textual study. Two years of solitude and meditation gave me the priceless gift of time and the skill it takes to sift through and digest a lifetime of experience in a way I never dreamed possible.
Before I went into retreat, I considered myself to be a generally happy and high-functioning individual with a pretty good meditation practice. But I soon realized that having lived a very full and busy life had left me little time to process and integrate much of my life experience. I recognized that I still harbored a lot of emotional, mental, and spiritual “unfinished business.” This “unfinished business” gradually surfaced in meditation, and I used the metacognitive skill of observing the contents of the mind to witness unresolved feelings about my divorce, recurrent memories of trauma, and unprocessed feelings of grief over the loss of loved ones arise and pass over time. Weeks and months of meditation brought about a natural mental and emotional healing process that Dr. Wallace calls “dredging the psyche.” To my surprise, I also came to appreciate that many small life experiences, like long-forgotten events from childhood and adolescence, also rose to awareness to be reflected upon and understood.
During retreat, the combined gifts of time and practice allowed me to withdraw from the pressures of daily living and what Henry David Thoreau called the resulting life of “quiet desperation.” I had the time and space to probe deeper into the very nature of existence and escape from the feeling that I was simply treading water on the surface of life. This brought about joy and relief discovering for myself a deeper and more reliable level of inner sanity. Through the resolution of “unfinished business,” inner conflicts diminished. Not only did my mind become more calm and clear, and my senses more acute, but chronic joint pain caused by years of inflammation disappeared. Eventually my body became pain-free.
Retreat was not all smooth sailing, though. Sitting in meditation during the emotional upheavals that arise when unpleasant and repressed memories emerge took courage and fortitude. Retreat also forced me to confront intense periods of loneliness, grief, boredom, frustration, laziness, mental chatter, heat, cold, insects, mice, and so on. Over time, I learned that I could make peace with these upheavals, though not prevent them from occurring.
The weathering of emotional upheavals brought about the most fascinating outcome of retreat: that is, the emergence of a whole new level of energy, curiosity, imagination, and fascination with life itself. I realized that energy that had once gone toward inner conflict could now be diverted toward helping others. I experienced firsthand the truth that as individuals we can only be of service to others to the level that we have healed ourselves. I knew that when I completed my two-year retreat, I wanted to dedicate the next phase of my life to working with the CCR and helping make it possible for many more people to benefit from the discoveries full-time contemplatives make in retreat.
Finally, I wish to add that during my retreat, I meditated daily with gratitude for the kindness and generosity of the CCR community and supporters. I can tell you that I longed to be able to find the opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation for that support. In the spirit of reciprocity, I hope that I may repay your generosity by offering my best toward serving the CCR and moving us closer and closer to “Fathoming the mind, and healing the world.”
CCR Executive Director Courtney Johnson explains the different avenues the CCR and SBI take to achieve a common goal.
From left to right: CCR co-founders Dr. Eva Natanya and Dr. B. Alan Wallace with SBI Executive Director Michelle Victoria at CCR North America in Crestone.
In the spirit of invigorating your familiarity with our work, whether you’ve known us for some time or are new to our community, today we’d like to address a common point of curiosity about the difference between CCR and SBI.
Impact and Mission
The ultimate aims of both CCR and SBI are to equip humanity with the capacity to achieve a new era of flourishing through contemplative science, to help us understand the nature of mind and well-being, and thereby facilitate both the alleviation of suffering and the increase of mental balance in our world. However, the two organizations differ in the avenues by which they work to achieve this shared goal.
Santa Barbara Institute (SBI)
The Santa Barbara Institute (SBI), founded in 2003, has long been the primary vehicle for the transmission of teachings in the Buddhist tradition by Dr. B. Alan Wallace, in keeping with the distinct lineages in which he has trained extensively with his mentors and guides, and in which he is authorized to teach. The teachings offered through SBI have been offered as lecture series and meditation retreats ranging in length from a weekend to eight weeks. SBI has also served as a vehicle for sharing knowledge from other teachers within the Buddhist tradition.
For decades, Dr. Wallace invited the growing SBI community to share in a vision of creating physical laboratories where students of contemplative methods could engage in the intensive, full-time practice of contemplative science, while collaborating with researchers and representatives of other disciplines and traditions. Conducive environments designed for both sustained contemplative practice and controlled scientific exploration had never before existed together in a single place, and SBI was the venue in which the vision for bringing such environments into being was incubated.
“Just as astronomers need observatories and neuroscientists need laboratories to conduct their research, so do contemplatives need supportive environments, companions, and mentors to optimally develop the contemplative technology of shamatha and the contemplative science of vipashyana.”
– B. Alan Wallace, Epilogue to Fathoming the Mind: Inquiry and Insight in Düdjom Lingpa’s Vajra Essence
The Center for Contemplative Research (CCR)
This vision for such “mind labs” has come to fruition first through the Center for Contemplative Research (CCR) North America, in Crestone, CO, and will soon come to fruition through the CCR Europe, in Tuscany, Italy. These are physical places of retreat that directly apply the wisdom gained through Dr. Wallace’s lifetime of charting the course, and are made possible with the extraordinarily generous support of sangha, board members, and committed benefactors. SBI’s offerings have, for many years, disseminated the verbal and written wisdom that has inspired and trained the cohorts of contemplatives who have become the CCR’s first long-term meditators, through whom contemplative science becomes possible.
CCR and Expanding the Applications of Wisdom
In an environment where contemplatives and scientific experts can bring time-tested approaches from contemplative traditions into contemporary disciplines, CCR seeks to help humanity better understand and position itself for survival and flourishing through the resonant language of our time—language that includes that of reason, empiricism, and science.
The CCR embraces dialogue with contemplative traditions from around the world, and invites a broad range of individuals into contemplative experience. Deeply rooted in the Buddhist traditions of India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia, the CCR’s offerings are also informed by a variety of wisdom and knowledge traditions, both ancient and contemporary. Personal commitment to Buddhist tradition or practice is not necessary to engage deeply with the work of the CCR, while openness to and respect for these traditions of practice is at the core of our contemplative and scientific exploration.
The CCR’s educational offerings are meant to resonate in a secular context, while retaining fidelity to the validated insights and practices shared by ancient wisdom traditions, including but not limited to Buddhism. The CCR does not ignore the prodigious contributions of contemporary academic and applied disciplines, but rather collaborates with them in a manner that can bring about the broadest possible impact.
Because the CCR operates physical centers, conducts research (which includes managing relationships among researchers and institutes), and also develops educational offerings that seek to introduce rigorous training in contemplative practice to the secular world, the organization has a pressing need for more staff. Thus the CCR is preparing for the fundraising needed to increase our organizational capacity. In order to maintain smooth operations in the wake of important construction investments, and in order to grow judiciously, apace with its impact aspirations, CCR will continue to hire and contract with skilled professionals, assign the best expertise to our research projects, and ensure excellence in its educational offerings.
A Symbiotic Relationship
SBI continues to host and disseminate the Buddhist retreats taught by Lama Alan, and manages publishing relationships and distribution channels for his previous and forthcoming books, thus unfurling the deep teachings of Buddhadharma for those drawn to them, and cultivating a sangha community of teachers and practitioners. SBI will continue to enrich our world by sharing the foundational Buddhist teachings and guidance that set the stage for contemplative transformation, and nurture contemplatives-in-training.
The CCR is the fruition of SBI’s steady effort, now instantiated through the CCR’s three domains of global impact:
- Mind Labs: Retreat centers for contemplative science, where aspiring contemplatives complete thousands of hours of full-time training to achieve exceptional attention skills and introspective acuity
- Research: A research program that views full-time contemplatives not as mere participants in other scientists’ studies but as true colleagues—co-investigators—who can produce empirical evidence and make genuine discoveries of their own.
- Education: Curriculum and training modules in reflective and contemplative methods, grounded in deep pedagogical and psychological expertise, that span the six domains of mental balance: conative, ethical, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual.
These projects are mutually informative and closely aligned, and you will continue to see SBI and CCR working together intimately, with our shared belief that together we can nudge our world toward mental and ecological balance.
The CCR continues the work of the Shamatha Project, a groundbreaking study resulting in over a dozen peer-reviewed research articles about the benefits of meditation.
As we welcome our first cohort of full-time contemplatives to the CCR North America Campus, we are thrilled to continue building on the enormous success of the Shamatha Project, the most thorough scientific study of meditation ever performed. As Drs. Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson state in their book Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body:
[The Shamatha Project] is among the best direct tests of a meditation-induced altered trait in attention we have so far.
Working with numerous colleagues, Dr. B. Alan Wallace and Dr. Clifford Saron co-designed this landmark study, which was conducted at the Shambhala Mountain Center (Colorado, USA) in 2007. The study consisted of two three-month meditation retreats, each with 30 contemplatives. The second retreat acted as a wait-list control group, with the contemplatives matched on age, sex, and years of meditation experience.
Under Dr. Wallace’s instruction, the contemplatives meditated for six hours or more each day, practicing primarily shamatha meditation, which consists of an array of techniques for cultivating the stability and vividness of attention, grounded in relaxation. The shamatha methods were complemented by practice of the four immeasurables — loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and impartiality — which are designed to increase one’s positive aspirations toward greater well-being.
Led by Dr. Saron, a multidisciplinary team of neuroscientists and psychologists collected data from the contemplatives using multiple methods, including computer-based cognitive and perceptual tasks, mental-health questionnaires, and blood samples that were used to track biological markers associated with well-being.
The Shamatha Project and follow-up studies have provided compelling evidence that shamatha meditation can significantly improve one’s attentional faculties, together with other benefits. Specifically, these studies demonstrated the following effects:
- an increase in attentional skills (e.g., perceptual sensitivity) over the course of the retreat, and up to seven years after the retreat;
- an increase in emotional and psychological well-being, with the contemplatives’ behavior also suggesting increased emotional engagement; and
- an increase in the activity of telomerase, an enzyme that is positively correlated with levels of well-being.
The Shamatha Project’s two three-month retreats were among the longest in any scientific studies of meditation, yielding terabytes of data that continue to be analyzed today, 17 years later. The study has led to the publication of over a dozen peer-reviewed research articles, with the latest published in March 2021.
Full-time contemplatives at the CCR will complete retreats of at least three months, with most committing to much longer retreats (i.e., years or even decades). The CCR thus presents unprecedented opportunities for longitudinal studies that build on the groundbreaking work of The Shamatha Project.
